Things To Consider When Choosing a Coding Bootcamp
In light of my former experience as a Campus Director at two different bootcamps in Dallas, I often have friends and colleagues reaching out when they or someone in their network are considering attending a coding, design, or other bootcamp. I’m grateful they reach out, as it’s a very big decision (just as serious as attending any other educational institution), and deserves plenty of thought, investigation, and consideration to make the right decision. Since I’ve been asked so many times, I decided it was finally time to put it all down in writing so that it would be easier to share as a resource. Below are a few considerations as you begin researching bootcamps, and really, any place where you plan to exchange a considerable amount of money in exchange for knowledge and a potentially new career.
Me and Chelsey, one of my coding bootcamp grads who I later hired at an agency I worked for.
Know Your Motivations
This is where your journey should start. I’ve interviewed hundreds of students who are thinking about attending a bootcamp, and their motivations are always different. Some are just looking for any kind of career to begin, some are looking to change careers, make money, more work/life balance, get into tech…the list goes on. The reality here is that whatever your motivation, you should research well and understand what you’re signing up for by taking on a career in software development. “I want to make a lot of money” is probably not the best reason, in my experience. Sure, a career in software development can be lucrative if you work hard and are good at it, but that likely shouldn’t be your main reason as it may not be the right motivation to carry you through the hard work and dedication required to be successful. So how do you sort this all out? Here are a few recommendations:
Talk to other professional developers to get a sense of the range of the industry and what it takes to be successful. You can do this on LinkedIn, community Slack channels or Facebook groups, or attend local networking events.
Exhaust free resources before signing up for a bootcamp. Codeacademy, Udemy, LinkedIn Learning, Khan Academy, and others can help you decide if it’s really something you’re interested in as a professional career. The best advice I heard instructors give prospective students was to sit down for a weekend and try to code for a few hours straight. This should start to give you a good idea of whether or not you’re finding the problem-solving and challenge of learning this material fun and exciting, or if you hate it and want to abandon ship. (It’s definitely better to figure this out before you’ve invested thousands of dollars and committed to a loan!)
Attend the bootcamp’s free workshops (almost all of them host free “Intro to” workshops that should give you an idea of the course material and skills you’ll be learning). Take the opportunity to meet the instructors, and get a feel for the curriculum to see if you think it’s seriously of interest to you and worth pursuing.
Credentials/Licensing
Next up: legitimacy. Many people don’t realize, but good teaching institutions should be either accredited (like universities are), or licensed with a regulatory body. For example, here in Texas, we have the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) that licenses bootcamps. Licensing not only provides legitimacy for a school, but it provides recourse for students if things don’t go as planned. It’s an external party you can go to in order to verify a school’s legitimacy (to make sure they’re not some randos who are going to run off with your money in the night), as well as to file a complaint if anything goes awry during or after your program (if you feel your school didn’t deliver on their promise of what they were supposed to teach you/help you get hired in). TWC sets up specific guidelines regarding required experience for the staff that runs and teaches at the school, which is designed to protect the students so they don’t end up at a school where unqualified people are walking off with their money. They also provide an important regulatory piece we’ll discuss further below regarding tracking student outcomes. For now, some things to keep in mind regarding licensing:
Ask your prospective school about their licensing requirements and status, and confirm via TWC’s website.
Look for a license at your prospective school’s campus and check the dates. It should be prominently displayed in a visible area on the wall somewhere at their campus. If you’re virtual, you should be able to request a digital copy to confirm.
Staff Experience/Backgrounds
Of all of the above considerations so far, this may be the most important. If you’re going to attend any kind of bootcamp, you should always verify the experience and credentials of the individuals you’ll be learning from. In the tech industry, this is important for a few reasons. Ideally, you want not only a tenured instructor who has experience working in different types of environments and with different technologies, but also preferably someone who has previously mentored and/or hired junior developers. An instructor with this kind of background will be the best positioned to help you make the career transition into development, because they have a realistic understanding of what’s possible for a student to learn during the length of the program, and can help you best upskill to be able to work from day one of your new job. They’ll also be able to best help you understand your own limitations and assist with building a path for your own personal and professional growth as you come into your new skill set. There is an unfortunate trend in the industry of many schools often hiring their own graduates, whether out of convenience, affordability, or to boost their employment numbers, so it’s something to keep an eye out for. You don’t want someone with zero professional experience as the person responsible for your outcomes if they’ve never worked in a professional development role themselves. Some schools do employ recent graduates as teaching assistants, which can be okay if they’re not the sole instructors responsible for teaching and student outcomes, but I would also be mindful of how that factors into their graduate placement numbers. Some recommendations on what to keep in mind are you vet the quality of instructors:
How tenured are the instructors/how many years of experience do they have as professional developers? They can be bootcamp graduates themselves, but they should have a few years of work experience if they’re the main instructor for your course and ultimately responsible for your outcome.
Research the instructors at the school, and look them up on LinkedIn. Are any of them graduates of the school? If so, what are their student outcomes? It’s not impossible to create a good instructor with no professional experience (I’ve seen them, but they’re rare), but it is unlikely and definitely not the best scenario, so be wary and do your research. Any good school will let you communicate with an instructor and should host their bio on their website or give you access to more information about their background and experience.
Ask to interview with the instruction team, and attend workshops if they’re hosting any. This will give you a good sense of their personality, teaching style, etc. Not all technical individuals are great teachers, so that’s another thing to keep in mind—what actual teaching experience do they have?
Curriculum + Length of Program
A school’s curriculum is another big piece that’s also tied to licensing. If you’re attending any program, bootcamp or not, you want to ensure that it’s actually going to have a curriculum that’s been designed with employers and actual jobs in mind. Schools are required to have Advisory Boards in place so that they can offer advice on the curriculum and how students are performing in the field, which helps to ensure that the curriculum remains relevant. Technology changes often, so it’s best to ensure that the course you’ll take will be teaching technologies you can use in the workforce tomorrow. Again, this is where instructor experience typically plays a role, as they are often the ones helping to develop and shape the curriculum. In addition, you want to understand how they’re pacing the course and what their duration (3 months, 6 months, etc.) is based on and what skill set you can hope to gain in that amount of time to be valuable in the workforce. In order to research further, here are a few things you can consider:
Research jobs based on the technologies the school is teaching. For example, if they’re teaching Java as their main programming language, go to places like LinkedIn, Indeed, and Dice to research how many Java jobs there are in your area.
Ask what level of involvement the school’s Advisory Board has in shaping the curriculum, and how often they hire from grads and provide feedback to the school on how they’re performing in the workforce.
Again, verify the school is licensed locally. The local licensing body will be tracking their job outcomes to ensure what they’re teaching is relevant in the workforce.
Career Readiness/Job Placement Support
Last, but certainly not least, you should research what the school’s career support looks like. Many code schools like to throw FAANG logos on their page and showcase all of the big corporate names where their graduates work, but those often tend to be outlying cases and not the norm or a realistic hiring scenario for many of their graduates. During your interview process, you should ask for specifics on their placement numbers and get specifics on what their career support program looks like, if they have one. Will they help you build a resume and prep for interviews? Will they introduce you to employer partners or host a job fair? Beyond placement numbers, you should ask what the average time to hire is so that you have realistic expectations for how long it’s taking students to find a job and begin work after completing their program. Here are a few things you can do to fully investigate your school’s career support post-grad:
Ask them for their placement numbers for full time hires after graduation, excluding any students who have been hired by the school itself, along with the average time to hire. This will give you a realistic picture of how many graduates are being placed in full time jobs following the completion of their program, and an idea of how long you can expect to be job searching.
Ask for a list of their Advisory Board companies. This is a board made up of local businesses that are interested in helping to shape the curriculum and develop talent that they’ll want to hire when students complete the program.
Ask for a list of local employer partners, and how many grads work at each business. Again, this will help you get an idea of the types of businesses the school is partnering with and what kinds of roles students are being hired into.
Check out sites like Course Report to learn more about the student experience here. Remember that you do have to take reviews with a grain of salt, but focus on the bigger picture, any patterns overall or by location from students who report positive or negative experiences. It may also help you prepare and target questions for the people you interview with.
Payment Plans/Types
This is the big one: money. How will you pay for your schooling? Many schools work with lending partners like Climb Credit, who are designed specifically for trade school/technical training programs like bootcamps. These loans have no incentives or protections like federal student loans, and they’re held by private loan companies. There is a also trend now of schools using Income Share Agreements, or ISAs, to help students fund their tuition. Essentially this means you pay no tuition upfront, but after you are hired post-grad, you begin paying a portion of your income back to the school for what you owe for tuition. While this sounds great in theory, there have been a few articles (such as here and here) that call this practice into question and explore how it can often become predatory. Here are some things to keep in mind as you explore your financing options:
Discuss with the school how payment is structured. Is there a deposit due upfront to hold your spot? Is the deposit refundable?
Determine how you will pay for the remainder of your tuition, and how the school handles refunds. Do they pro-rate your refund based on how much of the program you attended? Is there a “point of no return” date where you are no longer eligible for a refund?
If the school is requiring or pushing an ISA, do your research and talk to former grads. Does this arrangement work? What are the terms and conditions of your repayment? Are there things to keep in mind like timelines and compounding interest? What’s the realistic outcome of your repayment and how will that affect your future career/life goals?
The list of questions and considerations is quite long, but I’ve tried to cover most of the major considerations when selecting a bootcamp. And these certainly aren’t the only things to keep in mind. Choosing to invest in your education and attend a bootcamp is a big decision, and it’s a decision best made with research and confidence. Every school is different, and so I encourage you to take the time to dig into these considerations to find the one that might be the best fit for you. Ultimately, no matter how good the school is, it will be up to you to put in the hard work that will ensure your success and a career after graduation.
If you’d like to chat further about exploring your career options, including bootcamps, feel free to book a coaching session with me here.
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